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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
one more thing to add, i don't read novels for "intellectualism"-- i read novels to feel something. that's the difference between art and philosophy.
sure, intelligence is required, but it's not about "intellect"
how did nabokov put it? the tingle in the back of the spine.
art is not just a "head" thing-- the aesthetic experience is also of the body
intelligence and intellectualism are not the same thing
this is why godard made so many fucking boring movies. peddling a bunch of fucking "ideas" with no feeling or sensibility.
if you want an intellectual experience, read philosophy or science.
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See, I also don't think Vonnegut is a BAD writer. Not at all. I don't love his style, but I love others who wrote in a similar style with perhaps less skill (like John Irving... seriously, I don't know — do people even really take him seriously anymore? Have they ever?)
But John Irving's prose gives me the tingle in the back of the neck. I read "The Cider House Rules" late in high school (movie was shit), and I thought it was absolutely beautiful in its roundabout description of heartache and fucked-up love (for fathers, father figures, significant others) that are bound to lead nowhere, and result in pain.
And "A Prayer For Owen Meany" zeroed in on the specter of my Catholic upbringing (by Episcopalian proxy) so vividly that it brought tears to my eyes. Again, the movie (Son Birch) was twice-shat doghit Hallmark sentimental nothingness).
So my beef with Vonnegut is not that his intellectualism is too "high school," because I don't need something to be intellectual for it to affect me, or to love the shit out of it (see: Superman, Kanye West, LOST). My beef with him is that his books have never given me a tingle!
Again, he strikes me as a satirist who is at once paying homage to, and making fun of, some weird amalgam of Mark Twain and Ray Bradbury. But I got a tingle from "Inherent Vice," and from "Illuminatus!" etc. it's just something about his style. Intellectual or non-intellectual... if just doesn't tickle me.
But I do relate to the "high school intellectualism" comment because ... when I was in high school, all the kids who really wanted to come across as smart seemed to love love love Vonnegut and make a big hairy deal about it. Has noting to do with Vonnegut himself, but I think those
please-think-me-a-literary-gent! types just gravitate to him like a goddamn electro-magnet.